On the Other Side
by shooting-stetsons
Summary: Another prequel to A Study in Lullabies, this time from Lestrade's POV. Rated for language.


When I was seventeen years old, I was forced into a theatre class.

It wasn't my idea - obviously, going by the word "forced" - my Maths teacher said I had to make an attitude adjustment, or he wouldn't pass me for the module, and then I'd never be able to get into Hendon. So I decided to just grit my teeth and sign up for the first class that had an opening - which turned out to be one in Children's Theatre, where we had to write and perform plays for the local primary school. At the time, I was very near just throwing it all out the window and finding another teacher to write my letter, but no one liked me as well as my Maths teacher did, even if he did make me take stupid courses.

The play I had to be in was called "The Little Lost Jam," about a little boy who loses his favorite jar or jam, and asks the local detective to help him find it. It was dumbed down and ludicrous, but a friend of mine was directing and at least gave me the part of the detective. I got to put on a ridiculous trench coat and fedora hat like one of those film noir stars, and toted around an enormous novelty magnifying glass in one hand, ridiculously-sized pipe in the other. One of the prettiest girls in school, Anita McFarlane, was playing the part of the _girl_ missing _her_ jar of jam (switching the pronouns after memorizing the damn script was a fiasco), and we ended up dating in the end.

For every performance we went to a different class, and a week into our little tour we were in the class of Mrs. Marks, a chubby middle-aged woman who seemed to have a perpetually-runny nose. After the play, Mrs. Marks made her pupils ask us questions. Anita sent me a pained glance - we only had so much time to finish and get back to school - but patiently accepted various questions about school and homework. Quite a few children wanted to know how difficult the Maths classes were. At the very end, when we were about to pack up and go, one girl raised her hand, sitting straight as a rod.

"Yes?" Anita said politely, pointing at her.

The girl stood up, black hair tied neatly at the back of her head, a scuffed and bandaged knee peeking out under the hem of her purple dress. "I have a criticism for the detective," she announced. I didn't even know kids knew words that big at seven years old.

Several of the other children sighed and even moaned miserably, but I felt oddly proud; most of the comments had been for Anita. "Yeah? What's that, then?" I asked with a friendly smile.

The girl didn't blink, silver-gray eyes pinning me to my place in a very judgmental manner. "I'm having difficulties understanding how you came to your conclusion, that the neighbor took Jenny's jam. Your reasoning was scattered and inconstant." She spoke very slowly and surely, obviously making certain that she pronounced every word correctly.

"Sherlock," warned Mrs. Marks. "Do you need to have some quiet time?"

"It was!" protested the girl, instantly heated. "Your conclusions were unfounded. I understand that you're not a detective and that much of the fault is placed upon the writer, but couldn't you have at least _tried?_" She turned to me for the second half of her statement, sounding almost upset by my honest attempt at acting.

The girl's (Sherlock? What sort of parents named their kids Sherlock?) classmates were silent but sharing stony looks, as though these were frequent occurrences in their class. Mrs. Marks looked like she dearly wanted to resign as a teacher just to be allowed to clock the girl. I was rather appalled, and hastened to answer the question and get this over with. "I did notice a few things were off, actually," I said quickly, feeling my face heat up; the girl who wrote the play didn't have a performance and had decided to watch us put on her script. "I'm going to be a detective myself, you see; I'm going to school to be one. Maybe if you told me how-"

"Isn't that nice, kids?" interrupted the teacher. "The boy playing the detective's going to be a detective in real life!"

The class applauded politely, and Anita used the opportunity to start packing up our meager set just before the bell rang for their school day to end. Mrs. Marks turned her back, and one boy shoved Sherlock out of the way to get to his backpack. "Hey!" I found myself protesting, dropping my half of our backdrop and picking my way across the room to the boy. "That wasn't on, mate. You can't push other kids, and definitely not girls." Alright, that had not only been my own philosophy, but I was also trying to show Anita how gentlemanly I was.

"But she's _weird_! She cuts up dead animals!" protested the boy, running around me to escape a scolding. I followed him out with my eye. Cuts up animals?

Suddenly a sheaf of paper was being held in front of my face, held out by Sherlock's skinny arm. I took a close look at her, trying to discern whether or not the pushing had upset her in any way; she certainly wasn't smiling, and the plaster on her knee had been rubbed off when she hit the carpet, but otherwise she looked completely unbothered. "I took some notes for you," she explained. "I used the same clues so you don't have to change the entire plot, but rearranged the order in which you found them in order to reach a more intelligible conclusion."

Unsure of what to say when under the scrutiny of those wide unblinking eyes, I took the notes. "Thanks very much," I smiled as genuinely as I could. "Do you want to be a detective when you grow up?" I crouched slightly so the girl and I were eye-to-eye.

"I haven't considered it," shrugged Sherlock, "but perhaps. Would there be many experiments? I rather enjoy doing experiments."

There was a gleam blooming suddenly in her eyes, one of wonder and great unfathomable curiosity. A bit weird or not, she was still just a kid, and she was pretty cute. "Maybe a forensic or crime scene analyst?" I suggested. "They do loads of experiments."

Sherlock grinned. "I know! I've read all about blood-splatter analysis, and I've started an experiment categorizing different types of cigarette ashes!" She was practically bouncing in place with eagerness, and I couldn't help smiling back at her.

"As long as you don't breathe it in, eh?"

"Greg!" called Anita from the front of the room, looking mildly annoyed. "We have to get back; come on!"

I turned back to Sherlock to see her face falling slightly. "Will you be my babysitter?" she asked out of the blue. "My nanny is horribly dull, and she puts me in the corner when she finds my experiments."

"Afraid I can't," I grinned apologetically. "But hey, I'll see you again when we're both detectives, right? You and I can work at Scotland Yard together."

"Yes, definitely!" agreed Sherlock, before Anita practically dragged me away.

On the bus back to school, the girl who wrote our play, Katie, was fuming. "I can't believe you took those notes, Greg," she scowled. "That girl was a pretentious little brat." I ignored her.

I thought about my little friend a few times over the ensuing years, though I had to admit that I forgot her unusual name. I kept her notes in the bottom drawer of my desk through training, studying it every once in a while, trying to figure out how such a little kid could make such amazing connections out of the tiniest details, especially ones that hadn't even been written into the script. But a year into training I spilled coffee on it, and soon the notes had been long forgotten.

Then, one fine day when I was nearly 32, married to Anita, and well on my way to becoming a DI myself, the current Detective Inspector I was working under, Parker, took on a new assistant: a pretty 21-year-old uni drop-out named Sherlock Holmes. Other than the obvious signs of aging, Sherlock had hardly changed, and I was utterly shocked for the memories of my youth to come rushing back. Sherlock's long hair was still tied back, her limbs still thin and knobby, she was even wearing a purple shirt - I would have checked her knee for a scuff or plaster, but didn't need to; her hands were dotted with scars and fingers coated in plasters.

"Experiments?" I asked when I had a moment alone with her, nodding to her hands with a gleeful smile.

She turned those glossy silver eyes my way, and instantly I knew that she'd forgotten that day in her primary school. It wouldn't be until weeks later that I learned about how she "deleted" unnecessary information that cluttered her mind. Of course I wasn't important enough to be remembered, not to a brilliant woman like Sherlock Holmes.

Even before the woman had joined our little team, I'd known that Parker was a right bastard. If there were three things he loved in the world, those things were smoking in his office, hitting on his assistants, and throwing his drinks in people's faces to watch the slipped-in rum burn their eyes. I would say something, but I was something of a favorite of his, and favored to take his job when he retired if I didn't screw up.

Sherlock had been brilliant as a child, yes, but as a woman she was incandescent. Her knack for spotting clues and solving puzzles had only sharpened with age and practice, and within minutes of looking at photographic evidence could make a breakthrough in a case that had been cold for months. I was a good detective, I knew that, but Sherlock made me feel a bit of an idiot, she was so clever. The one clever thing she wasn't, however, was in good health. To someone who didn't know her or wasn't a detective, she appeared to be either terminally ill, anorexic, or a model. The trained eye, however, spotted the rings around her eyes, the secrecy, the slight tremors in her hands, and saw the addiction lying underneath.

Despite her outward appearance, DI Parker never questioned Sherlock or had her tested, which was mandatory to work anywhere under reasonable doubt, let alone the Met. Somehow I had a feeling someone intervened when it came to that, but didn't dwell on it long. It seemed that this woman took on a whole world of her own when she had a focus, an outlet, and I just hoped that this job would help her find what she needed.

I knew what was going on with Parker and Sherlock from day one; anyone could see that she was doing all of the busywork while he took the credit. It drove me mad, to be honest, but what was I supposed to do? Get myself sacked? Anita and I had just had a baby, and we couldn't afford for me to be unemployed, even if it would give me more time at home with Marcel (name wasn't my idea, by the way). Within three months, Sherlock had had enough of the abuse and started shouting about how Parker was an idiot, he threw his cold coffee into her face, and she was sacked. Bastard.

When Parker was sequestered safely back in his office, I helped Sherlock get her few meager things gathered. She was blinking a lot, trying to get the rum-coffee out of her eyes, and nearly forgot her coat she was so angry and distracted.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock," I told her under my breath. "He wasn't on. I'm sorry."

She pursed her lips tightly and kept her eyes down. "Your sympathy means nothing. I understand you're not in a position to start fights, and that the fault goes on the DI himself, but couldn't you have at least _tried?_" she growled deep in her throat.

Before I could formulate a response she had snatched her coat from my hand and stormed out. I gaped at her back, almost able to hear the child's voice echoing back at me from years gone by. She was still just that same girl, pushed around for being in the way.

Parker's office walls were around me by the time I next blinked. "Sir, that wasn't on," I stammered. Parker looked up at me as though I were a rather peculiar insect that he was puzzling how best to squash. "You shouldn't have sacked Sherlock, not when she was doing so much great work. If anything you should have promoted her and given her the credit she deserved." I scanned his desk to check for coffee and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.

"You think we should have made some skinny, untrained girl, with no credentials other than an unfinished stint at uni and a drug addiction a constable?" asked Parker slowly.

Well, when he put it that way, I felt a bit stupid for suggesting it. "She's brilliant," I went on, however. "You've seen the way she pulls apart a crime scene; she's cleverer than most Sergeants, training or not."

"If I took her on, every junkie on the street would show up in the hopes of getting a ticket to their next fix," snapped the DI. "We're done discussing it, Lestrade, and if you bring it up again we'll see if you don't want to join her queueing for the dole."

Knowing when to recognize defeat, I left the office, headache pounding against my temples. I felt sorry for Sherlock - yeah, she could be a bit of a brat, and didn't know when to hold her tongue, but that didn't mean she didn't deserve the job she always wanted.

Four days later, by some miracle, Parker resigned, making a short statement that had obviously been written for him (too many big words) about how he could no longer shoulder the guilt of how he'd treated his underlings in the past, and how it wasn't on for a Detective Inspector - someone meant to protect the public - to be a bully and liar. Even more, I was given his job. It was the proudest day of my life; Nita and I started looking into a bigger house and talking about having more kids. The Sergeant I had been teamed with was moved to another department, to avoid hard feelings over my getting promoted over him, and I started working with Constable Sally Donovan, and even had a team of forensic analysts at my disposal; Sally referred a friend of hers, Leo Anderson, and I started taking him on.

It took a while for the fact that I could hire Sherlock back to hit me. When it did, however, I called her straight away and offered her the assistant's position again, intending to help her work her way up, but she refused. She wanted to be a detective. It didn't even sound like an option to say no, with the hard resolve in her voice. So that night I fudged up some paperwork and got her on as a consultant. A consulting detective. I don't even think they existed until Sherlock, and she probably wouldn't have had it any other way.

A week later I was kidnapped by a man in an obnoxiously expensive suit, who offered me an outrageous amount of money to spy on Sherlock. Appalled, I refused and went on my way, just hoping that there had been no witnesses to risk my new career.

Anderson and Donovan hated Sherlock, which was a problem. Even I had issues with her once we went from being sort-of-teammates to boss-and-worker, but we were able to work it out, whereas the Constable and her friend were constantly at tooth-and-nail with our consultant. Sherlock was hard and calculating and downright cold when in a frenzy of brainwork, passive-aggressive and surly when in a lull. Time and time again I caught her on the brink of clocking Anderson after one too many scathing remarks, and more than once I'm certain that she and Sally were going to treat the lads to a cat-fight after particularly trying cases.

And yet, by some miracle, we flourished. Those first years were some of the best the Met had ever seen, and some of the greatest of my life. Sherlock Holmes rose higher and shone brighter than ever before, so much so that I couldn't even fault her for her vices. I'd rather her addicted and on our side than clean and on the other (something Anderson and Donovan liked to darkly predict she would someday be regardless). I had never been in more awe of a fellow human being in my life. Sherlock and I took to smoking together outside during my lunch hour. Three years in Nita and I had another baby, a wee girl. I joked we should name her Sherlock. Nita didn't find it funny in the slightest.

It was then, in the fourth year, that things started to go sour. There was a decline in cases sent our way even though we'd become one of the most popular units in the area. Anderson and Donovan were rowing twice a week. I hadn't seen Sherlock in days, and that ate at me more than anything. I started passing by her flat on Montague Street on my way home, watching the window for a sign of life, but there never was one. My mind wandered back to the tall man who bribed me, who had seemed so interested in her, and I shivered.

On one such night as I was driving by, a light flickered on just as I passed under the window, and without knowing why I parked at the kerb. Sherlock's thin frame loomed, silhouetted, in the frame formed by the window, arms flying with passion as she shouted at someone. Even three floors up I could hear her voice, strained and crackling with emotion, and my heart seized. I didn't need to consider before going to the door (standing ajar) and letting myself in, taking the stairs two at a time.

"-trying to _help you_, Sherlock!" pleaded a man's voice, sounding to be around Sherlock's age. "Please, you're not well; you _know_ you're not!"

Something heavy crashed against a wall. "_Fuck you, Victor!_" Sherlock screeched. "Lestrade, I know you're in the corridor; get him out, he's trying to rape me!"

"_Sher_lock!" the man named Victor gasped.

I entered the flat with as much dignity as I could muster, taking in the average-looking young man standing on the other side of the flat's main room, hands still held protectively over his head. There was a very large encyclopaedia lying askew on the floor beside him - Sherlock's projectile.

The woman herself was half-crouched in the window, another book in her hands as she practically growled at Victor. Her eyes were wild and feral-looking; the muscles in her legs were jumping and twitching beneath her thin pajamas. It took an embarrassing amount of time to realize she was high off her arse on cocaine. "Alright, let's just stay calm," I ordered slowly, slightly concerned by how quick and shallow Sherlock's breathing was.

"I swear, I'm not trying to hurt her, Inspector," said Victor immediately, "I'm just trying to have a bloody intervention, but it's a bit bloody difficult when she doesn't have any friends and her family's got their heads up their own arses!"

Another book flew across the room. "_Shut the fuck up!_"

I winced and fought not to cover my ears; Sherlock wasn't just shouting, but was screaming at the top of her lungs with every word. I pointed at Victor. "You. Out. Now."

"But I'm-"

"-aggravating an already-unstable woman, _now get out!_" I interrupted, voice rising to a roar to be heard over Sherlock, who was screaming over and over again with her hands clapped over her ears.

Victor didn't need to be told three times, scampering out and leaving me to tend to the world's only consulting detective. "Sherlock," I said firmly, taking a cautious step nearer to the window. Sherlock had stopped screaming once Victor left, but was still blocking her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, muttering to herself. "_Sherlock_."

The silver in her eyes was barely distinguishable from the whites, her pupils were blown so wide. She finally looked at me, starting to shiver, hands still firmly in place. I pulled her out of the draughty window and onto the sofa, where she promptly curled what felt like her entire being around my shoulder and started panting as though she'd run a marathon in the space between windowsill and seat. Her heartbeat fluttered erratically under the fingertips I gingerly pressed to her carotid. Victor hadn't been wrong; she really wasn't well at all.

I stayed until Sherlock fell asleep, the worst of the high passing under my watch, then drove home. Nita thought I smelled like sex, and found a long black hair on my shirt.

Two weeks later, at a bloody fucking crime scene, Sherlock showed up high as a kite, ran after a clue, and had a heart-attack within three blocks. I had never been more terrified or more in love in my life.

Of course the higher-ups found out everything, then. I was seriously threatened (I'm surprised I wasn't sacked) and told that by no means was Sherlock allowed to work for Scotland Yard again. Oh, and also I had to be the one to sack her, of course. Bloody buggering hell.

When I visited Sherlock in the hospital four days later, the nutter with the monkey suit was already there. I tensed, ready to spring into action if anything happened, but then caught a snatch of their conversation.

"...have told you time again, Sherlock, and I don't know how else to make it clear," said the taller man. "If this foolishness continues, I'll have to resort to calling Mummy into it again, and you know how hearing the news the first time upset her so."

Mummy?

"She wouldn't have been upset if you hadn't said anything," muttered Sherlock back darkly. "Haven't heard from her in ages - did you eat her, Mycroft?"

Mycroft huffed a humorless laugh. "I'm not even going to dignify that childish taunt with a response, little sister. In the meantime, I do believe that Detective Inspector Lestrade has a message for you."

Feeling some degree of stage-fright for the first time since I was seventeen, I shuffled into the room and placed a Get Well Soon card on Sherlock's bedside table, before floundering over where to put my hands and settling on one the woman's calf. Sherlock's brother watched me with sharp, hawklike eyes the entire time I explained the situation to her, dumbing it down when those same eyes flashed dangerously. How I hadn't seen that the two were related sooner, I'd never know.

"Thank you for your censorship, Gregory," said the man once we'd been ushered out by a nurse. "My sister is in a rather fragile state."

I didn't see Sherlock again for a year, not until after Nita and I split up and she convinced the solicitors that I was in a relationship with a drug-addict, making it damn near impossible to be with my kids. My bitterness toward my ex and Sherlock and whoever the hell had discovered the bloody coca plant in the fucking Amazon drove me to nearly ignore the detective when I passed her in the street, but we noticed one another at the same time and made eye contact. I nodded at her.

"Lestrade," she replied cordially. Her voice was thin and reedy; I didn't need to see more to know that she hadn't stayed clean. "Do you have a tenner?"

I sighed and stuck my hands in my pockets. "What for?" I asked sternly.

Within the span of a blink Sherlock was crying, huge fat tears rolling from her eyes. "I want t-to go see my mum," she sobbed weakly, "but I don't have enough m-money for the train ticket." My steady stare never wavered, and after several moments of sniveling Sherlock snapped out of the act, primly wiping the tears from her cheeks.

"Well, it was worth a shot," she shrugged. "Unfortunately I can't stay to chat; I've got a case."

"A case?"

"Yes, it's rather dull," Sherlock said with a twisted lip. "It's this wash-out of an actress, you see. She wants me to cover up these scandalous photographs of herself and some higher-up in Belgravia." She laughed, and suddenly it seemed that the tears in her eyes were genuine. "It's all so fucking _simple_ if they would just _try_. I _hate_ having to fix their asinine little problems just for wretched money."

While someone who didn't know Sherlock Holmes would have assumed she meant she'd have rather been paid to do nothing, I knew it was the opposite. All she wanted was a new puzzle, something interesting to engage her ceaseless mind, without the worries of having to pay rent. Must have been maddening, accepting a cheque from some petty actress. "I'm sorry, Sherlock." I really meant it.

"Me too."

She looked away from me, eyes narrowing at something going on down the street. "That man's about to pull out a gun. I suggest you get yours, now!" Then she was gone, rushing down the pavement toward a perfectly ordinary man who stopped being perfectly ordinary when he saw the mad detective bolting toward him and pulled out a pistol.

"Sherlock!"

The shots echoed deafeningly in my ears as I took off after Sherlock, and as I caught her by the shoulders images of blood and poorly-attended funerals (but for one actress dressed comically in red) attacked my vision. People around us screamed, and without another thought I pushed Sherlock to the ground. "Get down!" I snarled as she fought to leap back to her feet, covering her body with mine. "And for fuck's sake, Holmes, I don't carry a firearm! Are you hurt? Sherlock, say something; _are you hurt?_"

She punched me in the shoulder. "I would bloody say something if you would shut up!" she snapped, shoving me off of her. Already, there were two other bobbies coming out of the woodwork to take the shooter down from behind. "Jesus, right in a puddle too! You owe me a new coat, Lestrade, I mean it!"

"We're in London; the whole damn city's a puddle."

Sherlock and I looked at one another, and then started to laugh. I hauled her to her feet and helped her limp home - I'd landed on her skinny little stick of an ankle as we went down - when she refused to go to the A&E. Her flat was just as appealing as ever, perhaps even a bit darker and damper than the last I saw her. She didn't even try to hide the cocaine bottle and antique syringe sitting on the coffee table. Sherlock shrugged off her bedraggled brown trench coat and threw it over the back of a chair. I was drawn in by the slide of shadows falling over her prominent collarbone, the delicate curve of her shoulders, the dimpled texture of her sternum beneath thin white skin.

"Tea?"

I shook my eyes away from the shell of her ear, face heating up. "Cheers."

It was the weakest tea I'd ever had in my life, and I've seen my fair share of hospitals, but the gesture was there.

Sherlock seated herself across from me, crossing her arms primly and casting a none-to-subtle glance toward the bottle and syringe sitting between us. "It's been four days," she said. There was an edge to her voice then, a brittle hardness that made me admire her strength even more than I had before.

"Congratulations," I replied as seriously as possible.

She shrugged, scratching idly at an old acid scar on her thumb. "It won't last. Never does."

My heart thudded painfully in my chest as I stood up and crossed the room to sit on the arm of her chair, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "It will if you really want it to."

"I don't know if I do."

I closed my hand around one shoulder and squeezed. "Then I can't help you." She dipped her head; my eyes caught on the little dip in her collarbone. Gods, but she was gorgeous.

As if able to sense my thoughts, Sherlock looked up and narrowed her eyes at me. "Do you want to fuck me, Lestrade?" she asked in a pointedly-innocent voice. Immediately I let go of her shoulder and backed off, but she got up and followed me across the tiny room. "Because I'd let you, y'know. If you really want to."

I swallowed. "I don't know if I do."

Next thing I knew, we were falling into her rat's nest of a bed, kissing and groping and cursing with blazing hot need for one another.

And so began the year I fancied myself in love with Sherlock Holmes. I wasn't, obviously, or this whole fiasco would have turned out much differently, but I'll always remember that time I had with her. It wasn't exactly what someone would call romantic - I'd get a text about once a week that was just one word: _bored._ If I wasn't working or with my kids, I'd finish whatever it was I was doing and run over to Montague Street, and we'd have a shag. I tried a few times to take her out, or to buy her something nice for her birthday, but every time I did she'd lock me out of the flat. She told me if I ever told anyone about what we did in the privacy of her own flat, she'd '_burn me_,' whatever that meant.

I was shockingly content, even if Sherlock was still using when I wasn't around. Without my knowledge, six months went by, and then I had apparently tried one too many times to do something nice, and Sherlock broke things off with me. I didn't pine after her or anything; what we'd had was purely physical to begin with, and I started coming to terms with the fact that I was a good ten years older than her.

Five months later, Sherlock was found shagging some stranger in the back of a pub for cocaine, and she'd been thrown into rehab. I wouldn't even have heard about it if Donovan hadn't been patrolling the area where Sherlock's brother found her. The rumors spread through our department like wildfire - that she was a prostitute, that she had killed the man after shagging him, that her brother worked for the CIA - and I could do nothing to stop them even if I tried.

Four months later I received a call from Mycroft Holmes in my office, who sounded the closest I'd ever heard such a well-put-together man come to a breakdown.

"The rehabilitation has destroyed her," he said, voice shaking. "She has no desire for anything, not food, nor sleep; not even a puzzle can pique her interest. Nothing I say will reach her, but I feel that perhaps you might have something - anything - to bring her back."

I didn't need asking twice. I went down to the archives and snagged a handful of cold case files without glancing at them first, then realized I didn't know how to reach Holmes' house. Luckily, the coordinates had been programmed into my GPS for me. Well, I say lucky, and really mean creepy.

Stepping into the well-furnished home on Downing Street, I practically hugged my files to my chest for protection before meeting Mr. Holmes himself, the same man who had tried bribing me into looking after his sister when I first became DI. He looked much the same; I couldn't say as much for my gray hair.

The woman I had known for five years and the girl I'd missed for nineteen was gone, completely decimated by her stint in rehab. Never had I seen someone so thin, so weighed down by their own demons. Suddenly she wasn't the woman I'd fancied myself in love with anymore, but the injured bird I wanted to hold under a flap of my jacket and protect until she was well again.

I explained one of the cases as best I could at first glance, a triple murder in a room locked from the inside with no murder weapon on site. Even as I talked it over I could see a light forming in her dull eyes. She was _interested_, thank God.

She took the file from my hands slowly, so slowly, and started reading what little information I had to give. I nodded to her brother in the door and sat down. When I next looked up, the other man had gone.

Over the next two hours I watched Sherlock come alive again, contemplating that cold case. Her eyes sharpened like blades, her back straightened to it's ramrod precision; she even tied her wild hair back again.

"The nanny," she concluded suddenly, snapping the file closed. "She had an antique hairpin the size and shape of the stab wounds., and got out through a panel in the ceiling installed for fire access."

I blinked at her, wondering if I'd even seen a nanny mentioned in the report, then felt a grin split my face. I had forgotten the rush that working with Sherlock gave me. "Really? That's fantastic, Sherlock! What about this one? Can you do another?"

Another she did. And then another, and another, until she was hunkered down on the floor with files spread out around her like a nest. A hired girl brought us tea, probably gallons of it by how Sherlock gulped it down in want of caffeine.

"I've just been exhausted for weeks," she complained, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Vomiting every time I eat hasn't helped either."

I made a sympathetic noise, but didn't know what to say - sorry rehab's taking it's toll on you? She'd hardly find that amusing. The thing about vomiting was a bit worrisome, though.

The afternoon went away, stretching shadows across Sherlock's thin face, and I prepared to leave. Before I could even glance twice at the now-solved cases on the floor, she had me pinned in her iron stare. She wasn't back to her old self; she was even better and fiercer than she'd been before.

"Do you still want to fuck me, now?" she asked bluntly.

I was completely taken aback. "No!" I stammered, then hastened to explain myself. "I mean, you're beautiful, really you are, but I don't...feel that way about you. Not anymore, I mean."

Her eyes narrowed scrutinizingly, and then she smirked. "Good. If I want to be in top form, I can't afford any distractions. From now on, I'm married to my work." She got up from her nest of papers and curled herself back into the armchair by the window, watching me clean up after her.

By the time I'd closed the clasp on my briefcase Sherlock's brother had come back. Something about him set my teeth on edge, and I tried not to look at him as I said goodbye. "Can I bring some more cold files tomorrow?" I asked hopefully.

Another smirk was my reward. "Can you bring a case? A _proper_ one?" she replied, her voice slipping back into its old cadence of smugness.

"I'll see what I can do for the criminal classes overnight, yeah?" I grinned and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Cheers, Sherlock. Mr. Holmes." I nodded politely at her brother before hefting my briefcase and letting his assistant show me out of the house. I felt invigorated, ten years younger and twice as strong. Already I had visions of "getting the old band back together" dancing through my head like fucking sugar plums.

Never will I ever be glad to hear that someone had been killed first thing when I got to work on a Tuesday morning, but that particular Tuesday was the closest I'll ever come. I called Sherlock as soon as I heard, heedless of whether or not the case was at all difficult enough to require her services. She practically shouted down the line at me that she'd be coming in a childlike excitement to be back to work.

Despite her obvious enthusiasm, I couldn't help watching Sherlock carefully once she arrived at the crime scene. Anderson and Donovan were looking particularly vindictive when I told them she'd be coming.

"But sir, she's a junkie! The higher-ups won't let her back on the payroll," Donovan protested vehemently.

I smirked and shook my head. "Well it's a good thing I'm not putting her on the payroll then, innit? And she's clean, she was just through rehab, if you'll remember." Of course she remembered, she was the first to know besides Sherlock's brother himself, and I could tell by the malicious glint in her eyes that if I didn't keep the women at least ten feet apart there would be a brawl of some sort by the end of the day.

Sherlock was surprisingly polite, though in a cold, stiff sort of way, as though she were distracted. I watched her carefully as she inspected the crime scene - run-of-the-mill stabbing, male victim, mid-40s, should be a piece of cake - and saw her wincing, gritting her teeth and subtly pressing a hand against her lower abdomen. I didn't think it was woman-problems, but it did look like she'd put on some weight around the midsection since I'd seen her six months before.

"Got anything?" I asked to keep Donovan and Anderson's attention on me when Sherlock stood and swayed slightly. I didn't want anyone doubting that she was back in top form, even if I myself was doubting it by then.

Nodding, almost more to herself than to me, Sherlock stuck her hands in her coat pockets. "His partner was in debt and wanted the insurance money," she stated without even a shred of her usual finesse before sweeping out of the room.

Donovan turned to me with one eyebrow arched. "Yeah, she's _definitely_ gonna be easier to work with now, isn't she?" asked the Sergeant sarcastically.

I didn't dignify that with a response, and instead sent Sally to go looking for the boyfriend and Anderson to collect more evidence from the scene. I snuck out the same way Sherlock had and found her leaning against the wall with one arm, bent nearly double, eyes stubbornly shut. "_Shit,_" she whispered to herself. She didn't even know I was there, and that was what worried me more than anything.

"Sherlock."

She snapped to attention, straightening and going white against the dull gray brick. "I'm..." she started, but didn't finish, shaking her head.

Stepping closer, I hesitantly reached out an arm, prepared to catch her if she fell. "Sherlock, you're in pain," I said carefully. "Do you need help?" I hardly waited for her to nod before taking her elbow and leading her to my car, confident that the lads on scene would clear everything up. I did, however, wait until I had Sherlock in the capable hands of the A&E specialists to call her brother. It was the middle of the afternoon and I knew he was a busy man.

London traffic be damned, Mycroft Holmes was at the hospital in fifteen minutes, looking white and very human with worry for his sister. He suddenly didn't put me off so much as he had only the day before in his sitting room. "Have they told you anything?" he asked me, trying very hard to sound demanding but really only sounding shaky and scared.

"Nothing," I shook my head apologetically.

He gave a huge sigh and folded over into the chair beside me, looking completely inconsolable. I didn't want to ask what could have him so frightened, but then it turned out that I didn't have to - fear for loved ones did odd things to people. "Our father died of stomach cancer when Sherlock was nineteen," he explained in a hoarse voice. "He was in such horrible pain, for weeks and weeks before he finally died. Have you noticed, her stomach looks larger?"

I was filled with a sudden horrible cold dread, the same I had felt when that nutter shot at Sherlock nearly a year ago. I didn't answer, but I think Mycroft took that as my reply and put his head in his hands. We didn't speak again until a nurse came looking for Sherlock's next of kin. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw that she was smiling. "Mr. Holmes, if you could come with me? You can come and sit with your sister while we tell her the good news."

Good news?

Mycroft looked just as puzzled as the nurse led him down the corridor, barely remembering to stop and look at me. "Thank you, Gregory. I can take it from here."

With nothing for me to do to help, I went back to the Yard to fill out the paperwork for today's case, improvising a statement for Sherlock - who would go down as an anonymous tip anyway. I worried about her, but remembered the nurse's smile, and became more curious than anything. Losing my train of thought I stared thoughtfully over the mish-mash on my desk, again thinking about how I should reorganize my things. Inevitably my eyes landed on the picture of my kids; Marcel and Nina were nearly five and three, respectively, and god I still feel the rush of how much I love and miss them every damn day. Then of course I thought of Nita again, and how much I still loved her even after nearly three years apart, and how happy we'd been throughout her pregnancies. It was like having kids made everything better, even when it didn't.

I blinked, and then it all fell together in my head - of course! God, I was pants at being a detective if I couldn't have even seen it in a whole afternoon with her. It should have been impossible, even I knew that, but wasn't she the one always saying that _when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, must be the truth?_

Sherlock was pregnant.

I couldn't conceive it, not really, and yet some part of me had known from the very start. Looking back, it just all _fit_ so well, like there'd never been any other option. I wondered what she must have been thinking then, and knowing Sherlock there must have been curse words involved. Quite a lot of curse words, come to think of it. I smiled at the thought, even though I did start to worry a bit about Sherlock again. She wouldn't know how to handle something like this, and I could only hope her brother would figure out what to do. If not, I supposed...well, there was always me.

"I'm not keeping it," she told me the next time we were alone, arms crossed stubbornly over her chest. "Mycroft's taking it; he has experience in raising sociopaths."

"You're not-" I started, but didn't have the energy to finish. If falling back on her non-diagnosis was what would make her feel better, I'd give her that. "Well, I hope you the best."

She snorted and opened another case file. Bed rest for two weeks wasn't going to be fun for either of us.

It was nice, after a while, beginning to feel like I was part of a proper family again. I could tell Mycroft was fond of me, if only because I knew how to tolerate his sister, and even Sherlock seemed to enjoy my being around, at least for the cases I brought in. More often than not, I spent dinner at theirs doling out what advice I could for the months ahead. Sherlock never listened, but Mycroft was rapt all the way through. He was really going to go through with it, it seemed. Good. Much as I was attached to Sherlock, I knew she wasn't even remotely ready to care for anyone other than herself yet.

I could smell a change coming in the air after a few weeks of visiting the Holmes' house, and it wasn't just to do with winter coming in. Sherlock wasn't taking to pregnancy well, her brother was on tenterhooks with worry, and the very air was stiff and cold with it. I wondered if these people even knew the meaning of fun, let alone if they ever had any themselves. With what little I had, I did what I could, and I just hope that I helped in my own way. Christmastime rolled around all too soon, and Mycroft invited me to theirs for the holiday; I took that as a sort of thank-you, and accepted it with nothing short of pride.

"Did you get your brother anything?" I asked a few days before, when we were going over a case.

Sherlock was leaned back in her chair, eyes closed with either thought or fatigue - at that point in her pregnancy it was difficult to tell. She sat quietly for nearly a full minute before snapping her eyes open. Fatigue it was, then. "Oh. Yes, an umbrella." I blinked, thinking an umbrella was an odd idea for a gift, but figured that Sherlock knew her brother better than I. Then I saw the hesitancy on her face and knew there was more to it than that.

"He didn't want a gift," she continued; being constantly tired and hormonally-imbalanced had made her more honest than she would have been before. "He said the _baby_ was gift enough." She chewed thoughtfully on her thumbnail. "It's a child, not a set of ink-pens to be given away at random."

There was a cant to her voice, a peculiar shine in her eyes, that made me realize what she was trying to say without needing to blurt it out. I just nodded and gave her knee a squeeze, feeling my worry for her and her child reach a peak. She wasn't ready for this stage of her life yet, but I knew that would never stop her from trying. I just hoped her brother had taken the news well.

_Told M. He won't stop shouting. Come get me. SH_

That was the text I received on Christmas morning. The thought of such a loving and devoted brother as Mycroft Holmes yelling at his little sister for wanting to keep her own baby filled me with an anger and disgust I'd never known before. If my own son ever did something like that to Nina, I don't know what I'd do. I set off for Downing Street immediately, calling Sherlock as I went.

"Are you here yet?" she asked, voice sounding strained and weak.

"Just left," I replied, much to her chagrin. "Sherlock, what happened? What did your brother say?"

There was a long silence on the other end before Sherlock finally replied. "I never thought he'd say anything like that to me," she murmured, voice crackling with the mobile signal. I picked up speed.

Mycroft didn't stop me when I showed up at his door to fetch Sherlock, and I wouldn't have let him stop me anyway. I met Sherlock on the stair and followed her up to her room, helping her pack up whatever she needed. "Where are we going from here, to mine?" I asked.

"Baker Street," replied Sherlock with a shake of her head, curls flying. "221B Baker Street. The landlady's giving me a break until I can get a flatmate."

"That's nice of her."

She made an absent humming noise, but didn't speak again until we were nearly on Baker Street. From the corner of my eye, I could see her fingers pressing in seemingly random places on her distended belly, tapping an erratic little rhythm as if trying to get a response from the baby. I smiled to myself. Sherlock would be fine.

I helped her settle in, but it was clear that she wanted to be alone once the landlady had let her in to her new flat and she'd put her books on the shelves. I wanted to say something, even just to tell her that I'd come round the next day, or that I was sure she'd be alright. Instead I tried to reach for her shoulder, changed my mind, and let myself out. It was a nice flat, that much I could concede.

It was early New Year's Eve when I heard from Sherlock again. To my surprise, she called me instead of texting, but then again I probably wouldn't have woken up if she hadn't. Still half-asleep, I nearly dropped my mobile. "Sherlock?"

"Lestrade," replied Sherlock tightly, sounding as though she'd been running. "I need you to give me a lift to the hospital. The baby's early."

Then I really did drop my mobile. It was one thing for the baby to be a few days or even a week or so, but she was a good month from her due date. "Are you-are you sure?" I asked even as I knelt to retrieve the mobile from where it skidded under the bed. "I mean, it's not Braxton Hicks or something?"

She was letting out a long breath when I had placed the phone back to my ear. "_Yes. I'm. Sure_," she ground out from between obviously-clenched teeth. There were a few moments of silence, and when she next spoke it was in a more relaxed tone of voice. "I thought it was a false alarm when it started last night-"

"Last night?" I practically shouted, feeling as panicked as though it was one of my kids being born all over again.

"Yes, last night," snapped Sherlock back. "It wasn't so bad that I couldn't sleep, but it finally woke me up about an hour ago. I'm not about to stand out on the pavement waiting for a cab to pass at this hour."

I looked at the clock; it was four in the morning. I sighed. "Yeah, okay, I'll be there soon as I can."

Compared to the dark of my room and the dark of the streets, the hospital was blindingly bright. Sherlock had been stubbornly silent the whole way to the hospital - she was too bloody proud to show she was uncomfortable - but groaned when we were exposed to the fluorescent lights. "God, aren't there any other settings on those bloody things?" she groused. I ushered her to the wheelchairs stacked against the walls; she nearly collapsed into it when a contraction hit.

"Alright, well..." I shifted from foot-to-foot once Sherlock had been set up in a room - private; I'm certain her brother had something to do with that. "I suppose I should...y'know." I gestured meekly toward the door, and Sherlock narrowed her eyes at me. I figured she would want me to leave her in peace, but got the opposite feeling when those peculiar eyes had me pinned down. I sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair and prepared for a long day.

A long day it was, too. The hours stretched on and on until I lost track of what day it was, only knowing the passage of time from trips to the ice machine and check-ins from the doctor. Every time he poked his head in with that sunny trill of, "And how's Mummy faring?" I had to move her ice-cup away to make sure the poor man didn't get nailed in the face. When at first the doctor wasn't convinced it would happen, the staff started buzzing that maybe Sherlock's baby would be the first born of the New Year.

"I don't _care_," Sherlock moaned, gasping and holding the rail of her bed in an iron-grip. "I don't want free nappies for a month, I want this over with!" I patiently wrenched her hand away from the bed-rail and let her crush mine instead, only wincing a bit as the wave hit its peak and then started to pass. "I want to get up. Help me."

I hovered anxiously by her side, occasionally rubbing my weary eyes, as she shuffled down the corridor. I finally got a chance to look at a clock - ten PM. We'd been at the hospital for seventeen hours, which meant Sherlock had been in labour for eighteen. I suddenly didn't wonder why she was so determined to be finished with all that.

We stopped outside that big glass window to the nursery, where all the new babies go when they're born, and Sherlock took a moment to lean against the glass. "You see that one there?" I pointed to a cot three rows back on the left end. "That's where Marcel was when he was born. And one row up, three to the right, was where they had Nina." She didn't reply or look up, but stared at the big incubators sitting in the back of the room like fish tanks, where a few impossibly tiny babies were being given special care.

"That's where mine's going to go," she nodded, eyeing an empty incubator in the corner. "If it even lives." She scrunched her eyes closed and leaned her forehead against the glass, gripping my wrist as a less intense contraction rolled over her. I waited until it passed to try talking, knowing that more and more of her concentration was being focused on the task at hand instead of me.

"It's gonna be fine," I said, probably a bit unwisely, to be honest, because I really didn't know what was going to happen. I had seen the nurses chittering away on one of my ice-runs and watched the concern on their faces as they looked from Sherlock's door to me, thinking I was her husband. "Have you thought of a name yet?"

"A name?"

I gave her hand a little shake. "Yeah, y'know, one of those things that people have? Yours is a bit pretentious-sounding?" That got me a pinch, but I didn't mind.

Sherlock shook her head. "No, I haven't. Why bother when everything could go wrong?"

I sighed and would have argued with her if another contraction hadn't come unexpectedly, much sooner than the last. Like some weird four-legged creature we hobbled back to her room and got her into bed to wait for more news.

"And how are we doing in here?" asked the doctor - a different one, as Sherlock's first's shift had ended - as he entered the room over an hour later. I signaled to him to wait without even looking up from her flushed face as she very nearly broke my fingers.

The doctor's (whose name I'd forgotten) eyes flashed with concern as he looked at one of the monitors at Sherlock's bedside, then quietly conferred with a nurse in the hall before coming back in. "Back with us, Sherlock?" he smiled sympathetically. Sherlock nodded, too exhausted to even make a sarcastic comment as I handed her some more ice. I could barely even think straight by then, I was so tired, so I couldn't even imagine how wiped she must have been.

For what felt like the hundredth time that day, the doctor checked Sherlock's progress, but as with only the last few hours, his face clouded over again. I'd been trying to pointedly ignore that in favor of looking after Sherlock, but couldn't any longer. The doctor covered her up again and gave her knee a squeeze. "Sherlock, I'm sorry," he said earnestly. "It's been nineteen hours, and you're at three centimeters. To let labour go on any longer will be a risk to you and the baby. We're going to have to do a C-Section, okay?"

Sherlock, who had gone stone-still, gave a tiny jerk of a nod but made no outward response. There were tears sparkling in her eyes, and I grasped her hand in as comforting a gesture I could muster. Fear was practically rolling off of her in waves now that the reality of having a baby was getting nearer.

"Hey," I said softly as soon as the doctor left to get the operating room prepped, "it's gonna be okay. You're gonna be fine."

I didn't know if it was a good idea but I went with her into surgery, and three minutes after midnight on New Year's Day, her son was rather messily pulled into the world. Sherlock tried to keep her eyes on him even as they rushed him to the back of the room.

"He's not crying," she said, voice faint with fatigue and drugs. "Lestrade, where is he? Did Mye take him?"

Looking over my shoulder, I was just in time to see a nurse stick a breathing-tube down the baby's throat. I cringed and turned back to Sherlock. "He's still here, Sherlock."

"Is he alive?"

I put my hand on her head, the easiest place for me to reach.

_For now_, I couldn't help thinking, looking back again to watch the nurses roll him out of the room. Just as it had happened when a man pulled out his pistol in the street, I had a waking nightmare of a too-small casket and watching Sherlock fall back into all of her old habits in the wake of such a tragedy. She would never recover if her son was not alright.

When they took Sherlock to a recovery room, I didn't accompany her but instead went to the children's ward where they took the baby. "Excuse me," I said to one of the nurses, "I'm looking for Sherlock Holmes' son, or the doctor looking after him, please."

"I'm sorry sir, but we can't let you - oh," the young man abruptly stopped when I pulled out my badge. He turned bright red and stood aside to let me into the ward.

I thanked him quietly and found the doctor who would be looking after Sherlock's son. "I don't want to make a fuss, understand," I told him as though in confidence. "I'm investigating the baby's father. He's pretty big in the drugs-world, and we've a feeling he's going to be coming round to see his kid. If I could just get word of his condition, maybe every few hours, that would be grand."

"Of course, Detective Inspector," replied the doctor instantly, and told me what little he could tell of the baby's state at the time being. I thanked him profusely.

Sherlock was asleep when I found my way to her recovery room. Not wanting to wake her after such a long labour, I pulled out a scrap of paper and wrote her a note before leaving for home.

_SH-_

_Start thinking of names._

_-GL_


End file.
